Gov. Ron DeSantis ripped what he sees as legislative rebellion against his raft of Special Session proposals, calling changes by leaders in the House and Senate insufficient and an insult to its presidential namesake in comments in a video and a social media post Monday.
“We’re not here for theatrics. We’re not here to do messaging bills,” the Governor said in a video.
“The Legislature’s bill is a bait-and-switch tactic trying to create the illusion of an illegal immigration crack down, when it does anything but. It is an insult to name such a weak bill after President Donald Trump, who has been so strong on this issue,” said DeSantis on X Monday.
The Tackling and Reforming Unlawful Migration Policy Act — the TRUMP Act — is a single bill that substitutes for much of what DeSantis wanted, but he lamented a lot of his wish list isn’t in the package.
“Overall, their new bill is substantially weaker than the proposals I outlined and that are necessary to ensure that Florida leads on fulfilling the Trump Administration’s mandate to enforce immigration law and deport illegal aliens,” DeSantis decried.
“It fails to put an enforceable duty on state & local law enforcement to fully cooperate on illegal immigration enforcement. This means that Florida localities will provide no meaningful assistance to federal efforts,” he added, before casting shade at who can best be described as the Governor’s frenemy, Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson, suggesting he wouldn’t enforce immigration law.
“It unconstitutionally removes authority to enforce the law from the Governor to a lower-level cabinet agency, the Department of Agriculture, that does not oversee state law enforcement and whose stakeholders often oppose enforcement measures. By giving enforcement power to the agricultural arm of state government, it ensures that enforcement never actually occurs. In short, it puts the fox in charge of the henhouse.”
Senate President Ben Albritton took issue Monday with much of what DeSantis proposed for the Special Session as not in accordance with what the federal government under Trump wants.
“I don’t support creating criminal penalties against frontline law enforcement officers. I don’t support different standards for protecting law enforcement from the threat of prosecution. We shouldn’t protect some employees and contractors acting on behalf of the state while hanging local law enforcement out to dry,” Albritton said.
The Governor had blasted Albritton and House Speaker Daniel Perez for saying the Special Session call was “premature,” and he again attacked their alleged stalling Monday.
“Though the Florida Legislature’s leadership initially said the call for a Special Session on immigration enforcement was ‘premature,’ they have now finally agreed to come in and do their job,” DeSantis said.
The Governor doubled down on these comments in the video Monday afternoon, saying that “most of the stuff that’s really, really going to be meaningful was not in the proposal” from the Senate and House. He said giving Simpson immigration enforcement power would be a “sop to the people who want cheap labor.”
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